Five Senses Coffee Blog

Caleb wins Vic Barista Comp

Caleb Podhazcky goes back to back winning the 2011 Victorian Barista Comp at the St Kilda Town Hall Auditorium.

This years field was the largest in many years with 17 competitors battling it out, including a few seasoned competitors such as Will Priestly and Erin Sampson (both Australian Latte Art champions).

The spread at the top of the pool was very tight with only 3 points separating Caleb and Matt Perger (1st and 2nd place).

Barista Comp results:
1st – Caleb Podhazcky (5 Senses)
2nd – Matt Perger
3rd – Erin Sampson
4th – Will Priestly
5th – Craig Simon
6th – Simon James

Latte Art results:
1st – Shin Kiru (Cafenatics Coffee)
2nd – Masahiro Onishi (The Premises)
3rd – Kirby Berlin (Maling Room)

Cupping results:
1st – Luca Costanza
2nd – Kang Byoung-Woo (BW)
3rd – Remy Shpayzer

Caleb Podhazcky wins Vic Barista Comp

Qld Barista Champion Announced

Well it’s a wrap. Top three for the Qld Barista champs are:

1st: Jean-Paul Sutton – Veneziano coffee
2nd: Scott Luengen – Dandelion and Driftwood
3rd: Josh Russell – Cup Coffee

Qld Cup Tasting Champion Announced

Cup Tasting competitions are a fast paced event that require competitors to line up and taste eight sets of coffee, three cups in each set, and battle against the clock to identifying the odd coffee in each set in the fastest time possible. This event is always a crowd pleaser, but very tense for competitiors as they stand back after competiting to watch the MC announce their results one-by-one to the crowd … and today’s Qld comp was no different. Results below:

1st: Fred Lullfitz – Di Bella Coffee
2nd: Anne Cooper – Di Bella Coffee
3rd: Hayley Sutton – Veneziano Coffee

2011 Qld Cup Tasting results: 1st-Fred (centre), 2nd-Anne (left), 3rd-Hayley (right)

Qld Latte Art Champion Announced

After a sensational morning of competition the latte art winner was announced:

1st: Scott Luengen – Dandelion and Driftwood
2nd: Josh Russell – Cup Coffee
3rd: Jason Smith – Coffee Dominion

2011 Qld Latte art results: 1st-Scott (left), 2nd-Josh (centre), 3rd-Jason (right)

UAE Barista Champion Announced

After judging espresso after espresso and consuming signature drinks combined with ingredients as varied as jasmine flowers to ginger, the judging panel at the final round of competitions have declared Raja Muthusamy as the new UAE Barista Champion!

The results are:
1st – Raja Muthusamy
2nd – Dada Kalander Noor
3rd – Romeo Perello
4th – Kushal Balami
5th – Almas Ahmad
6th – Elavarasan Pandiyan

All of the competitors did an outstanding job and you could definitely see that the level of coffee knowledge had risen from the previous year. For his espresso and cappuccino rounds, Raja presented to the judges a single origin Mexican coffee which he had roasted himself and for his signature drink combined this with a Colombian single origin syphon, almond milk, jaggery (palm sugar) and cocoa.

Originally from India, Raja has overcome some unique hurdles in his lead up to his win – with three years under his belt in the specialty coffee industry, he still finds it understandably difficult to convey to his mother in his home town of 250 people exactly what it is he does every day. For me, the path Raja and many of the other competitors took gave a whole new perspective to the power of the competitions and the specialty coffee community world wide – we often hear that this is ‘just coffee’ but for some of the national champions around the world, winning this competition is going to mean an unprecedented opportunity to travel to Colombia next year and to gain a world view that may very well not have been attainable otherwise.

For the rest of the competitors, there was a great sense of camaraderie and urge to learn and develop further and importantly, to give the competition another crack next year. There’s a lot of work to be done in the specialty coffee scene in the UAE; building the consuming culture dominated by middle eastern style boiled coffee and the viewpoint that the barista is on the same standing as a dishwasher requires a mental shift that won’t come easy. However, with a collection of passionate baristas and judges based in Dubai and further afield, it’s obviously now only a matter of time!

Raja Muthusamy wins the 2010 UAE Barista Championship

The 2010 UAE Barista Champion in action

Top six baristas in the UAE selected

The second day of competition in Dubai for the UAE Barista Championships saw another round of enthusiastic baristas present to the sensory judges a wide range of drink styles and approaches, obviously the result of much hard work and effort. Many of these guys are working full time jobs and have, like competition baristas worldwide, been putting in the hard yards in their own time to craft a presentation.

It’s encouraging to see the level of coffee knowledge during the competition as there’s been a marked increase from last year! The top six competitors who now progress through to the finals are, in no particular order:

Romeo Perello – Kempinski Hotel

Elavarasan Pandiyan – Raw Coffee Company

Dada Kalandar Noor – Dallmayr Kaffee

Almas Ahmad – Shura Trading

Raja Muthusamy – Raw Coffee Company

Kushal Balami – Raw Coffee Company

These six will reconvene in the final round to decide who is this years’ UAE Barista Champion!

Along with the national Barista Championships, the Specialty Tea and Coffee conventions is providing an opportunity for a broader spectrum of the industry to pick up new skills and knowledge with various presenters and trainers flying in from around the world. For the past two years, the event organisers, International Conventions and Exhibitions (ICE), have forged strong relationships with leading edge industry associations such as the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE) and our very own AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association (AASCA). This year, the SCAA has continued their support for regional development with Executive Director Ric Rhinehart heading up a team of workshop leaders including Ellie Hudson-Matuszak, Phuong Tran and Shawn Hamilton who are sharing their extensive knowledge of specialty coffee.

Stay tuned for the final results of the top 6!

Coffee in the Oasis

My journey in the coffee industry most recently takes me to Dubai – with lingering memories of the dramatic coffee of the middle east served with sugar and spice, this region of the world is slowly beginning to adopt and move towards the espresso driven specialty coffee culture. Dubai, the consummate host of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is to once again become a hub for the 2^nd UAE Barista Championships and associated Specialty Coffee and Tea trade show.

Making the trek from Melbourne to Singapore and onwards to Dubai, I arrived on day one to high humidity and some smoking temperatures around 37˚C – somewhat of a change from the crisp spring back home! On the trip from the airport to the hotel, it hit me once again that Dubai is laid out like a series of interconnected Oasis’ – stretches of empty land covered only by eight lane highways connecting gargantuan hotels and malls, the air-conditioning a welcome relief from the heat beating down outside.

The UAE Barista Champs is being held at the very new, very long hotel Meydan – in fact, stretching 1.4km end to end, this is the longest hotel in the world and wraps around a huge horse racing course that will host the World Cup later in the year (http://www.jumeirah.com/en/Hotels-and-Resorts/Destinations/Dubai/Jumeirah-Meydan/The-Hotel/). While the scale and polish of the venue could lean towards impersonality, we’re here for some very human connections with both the baristas and judges. Day one and two of the trip have been dedicated to a Judge Workshop with myself and Scott Conary from the US taking a pool of judges with a variety of competition experiences through the procedures and philosophies of becoming a quality competition judge. It was exciting to see a range of past competitors, including last year’s UAE Champion, a past Serbian national barista champ, a USA national champ and a Hungarian national champ. These guys added an invaluable level of empathy and technical understanding of what’s happening up on stage. My apologies to all who had to sit through and mock judge my hastily prepared competition performance – there’s a reason I stepped down from competing!

Day one of the competition is over and with 11 competitors down, we have another 10 to go. The skill levels are varied but the inspiring thing is to see the attitude that all competitors are taking to learning some more about the barista craft. While choosing a champion to represent the country is obviously the end goal, the development of the coffee culture and opportunity for growth is a hugely positive byproduct of the competitions.

Day two of the competition follows on today and from this combined pool of 21 baristas, the top 6 will move onwards to the finals on Day 3, one of whom will be crowned the 2^nd UAE Barista Champion and will head to Bogota, Colombia next year to compete against champions from almost 60 other countries. Let’s see what the competitors bring today!”

Dubai Barista Championships

All the action from the 2010 WBC

After acquiring new human origami skills on a 25 hour flight from Melbourne to London, I unfolded myself from my plane seat and emerged into balmy summer weather and 10pm sunsets. I was ready to get stuck into the exciting event that is the 2010 World Barista Championship (WBC)! My disconnect level was pretty high – but jet lag was sorted by a strong dose of WBC judge calibration!

Each year, a lucky few are selected from a pool of accredited judges from around the world to sit in front of the top baristas from over 50 countries at the WBC and absorb their interpretation of exciting specialty coffee — a pretty sweet job!

This year’s judges calibration was more intense and successful than ever before. Over two full on days we pulled apart every possible interpretation of the rules, ran through innumerable tasting and scoring calibrations and limbered up our fingers for frantic scribbling. We participated in exercises designed to refresh our memory of how it feels on ‘the other side’ of the table. We were split into groups, given a coffee and told to get behind the machine, find the best extraction for that coffee and provide the head judges with a concise set of descriptions.

With a plethora of skill sets within the group, we experienced an exciting melting pot of perspectives and approaches to assessing specialty coffee. There were lots of big names, including previous Australian Barista Champion and runner-up WBC competitor, David Makin, along with James Hoffman, WBC Champion and owner of Square Mile and Stephen Morrissey, WBC Champion working at Intelligentsia. They all provided invaluable perspectives as past participants of the WBC. It was great to see these previous competitors helping to develop the competition and industry they love.

After a gruelling two days of intense discussion and an abundance of espresso shots, I headed over to the impressively grand Olympia Stadium for the competitor briefing session. WBC organisers ran through the amazing stage set up, prep times, rule clarifications and the innumerable details that need to be pulled together to ensure a smooth event. It was great to see the camaraderie between competitors as the excitement started to build!

Day one (Wednesday) saw 30 competitors presenting with an additional 24 competitors on day two (Thursday). I acted as a sensory judge throughout and it was an honour to have the opportunity to sit, taste and listen to the passion of the competitors.

The new semi-finals format had competitors excited. This year’s event saw the top 12 competitors from the pool of 54 moving through to the next round. From this top pool of 12, the competitors would be whittled down to an even more polished six, who would be the WBC finalists.

The 12 semi finalists included returning national champions and some virgin competitors, who gave amazing performances and served up delicious coffees. There was a huge roar when it was announced that Australian Barista Champion, Scottie Callaghan was through to the semis. The Aussie support crew was out in force and, as usual, were unrestrained in their gleeful cheering for our champion!

One of the most exciting things to see was that the semis pool included five competitors from coffee producing nations. This is a huge step forward for the competition and our industry as a whole, as it indicates the strong flow of information between consuming and producing nations. There were great techniques shown, and the passion and quality of coffee being served by these guys was amazing. It’s great to see so many different perspectives from the worldwide coffee industry.

Day three (Friday) saw excitement and stress levels rise exponentially! Competitors had been training for months (sometimes years) for their 15 minutes on stage – half of them would go through to the finals and for half of them, it would be a long trip home. After presenting some amazing interpretations of specialty coffee on the stage, the results finally came through. Again, the Aussie contingent went wild as Scottie progressed to the final round of the 2010 World Barista Championship! The final six countries were Australia, USA, Guatemala, Ireland, Denmark and Greece, a great mixture from around the world.

After a tense round of competition with the stadium packed out and people cheering in the aisles, Michael Phillips from Intelligentsia Coffee in Chicago, USA took out the top podium. Michael’s signature drink combined an exciting sensory aspect, representing three different coffees from the same farm in Costa Rica, along with the technical challenge of changing these coffees through the grinder in the tight 15 minute time frame. Scottie gave a polished performance, placing 3^rd in the world with his cardamom infused signature drink and dynamic engagement with the judges.

The week was truly great — although thoroughly exhausting! London put on a great show and hosting international guests with a warm reception at espresso bars around the city was a spectacular addition to the experience.

The World Barista Championship is moving ahead in leaps and bounds and the continual focus on the role of the barista, the importance of the coffee and coffee knowledge presented and a move towards bettering our industry helps move us forward. Moving into 2011 we’re looking at another groundbreaking event, with the first ever WBC hosted by a coffee producing country. Colombia will be the host nation for the next championship, with plans to provide exciting opportunities for all national winners to experience the coffee regions of Colombia around the competition schedule.

The barista competitions, while never being the be all and end all, continue to improve the quality of specialty coffee and tie the worldwide coffee community together under the banner of progress towards quality!

Check out  the “WBC website”: www.worldbaristachampionship.com for more. The “AustralAsian Specialty Coffee Association (AASCA) website”: www.aasca.com has information about this year’s Australian championships.

2008 World Barista Champion, Stephen Morrissey contemplates the next few days